The Bastion held its breath.
Rain drifted sideways through the sundered arches of the northern courtyard, fine as ash, soft as the memory of blood. Kael Sorrén knelt in it, bare hands red with the life of the boy he could not save.
Dren's chest did not rise.
The glyph in Kael's palm—Continuance, wrought in pale auric light—pulsed weakly as if mourning, its light no longer resolute, but flickering. Faltering. Failing.
His breath came shallow. No words. No fury. Only that stillness that comes after something shatters, and the pieces are too jagged to gather. His shoulders trembled. Not from the cold, not from exhaustion, but from the knowledge that he had power beyond reckoning—yet not enough to save one life that mattered.
The ground beneath him was cold. Or was that his skin?
The courtyard was ringed in silence. A silence louder than screams.
Behind him, the 13 Banners had encircled the courtyard—not as warriors, but as witnesses to something sacred and unspoken. Ironwrought stood motionless, gauntleted hands curling once, then releasing, the metal creaking with grief he did not voice. Dreadmaw's tusked jaw clenched, throat working like he was holding something in—rage, tears, or a roar that would have torn the sky. Whisper-Vow crouched low behind Kael, veil soaked through, her stillness too precise to be anything but reverence. Watching. Waiting. A predator to all but this moment.
Even Crate—for once unburdened by schematics and alloy—stood bare-headed, fists at his side, lips parted in some forgotten prayer he hadn't spoken since the fall of Shal'Vern.
And Etuun—the hybrid who had once tried to end Kael in fire and thunder—stood among them now. Not as foe. Not yet as a friend. But as something weightier: witness. His armor still bore the scars of their duel, the blackblooded cracks down his collar and shoulder gleaming in the rain. And yet he did not look away. His hands, clawed and scorched, trembled slightly as they closed into fists. His breath hitched once. Then stilled.
He bowed—not out of submission, but out of understanding. For this, he knew: death was a language older than loyalty.
And Kael—kneeling in the rain, blood soaking into his sleeves, Continuance failing in his palm—could not raise his head. Could not look any of them in the eye. He had led armies. He had broken a city to save it. He had bent Sin to his will.
But he could not stop Dren's breathing from ceasing.
A gust of wind stirred the cloak hanging from Kael's shoulders. The glyph dimmed.
"Live," Kael whispered. "Please. Dren, live."
He pressed the glyph to the boy's chest.
Nothing.
He pressed again.
The glyph sputtered. Dren's body remained limp, eyes half-lidded, gaze unfocused. Kael leaned in, pressing his forehead to the boy's brow. The rain smeared ash and blood into soft rivulets around them.
"Why won't it work?"
His voice cracked—not from anger, but helplessness. The kind that breaks through years of command and survival and makes a warlord sound like a child again.
Whisper-Vow took a step forward but said nothing.
Kael's memories swelled, unbidden:
Saltspire, years ago.
Another hybrid boy—arms twisted from experiment, mind shattered from cage-time—lay dying in Kael's arms. His breath bubbled red. Back then, Kael had no glyphs. Just pain. Just a whisper of a promise he could never keep: I'll free you all.
That one had died too.
And this? This was worse. Because now Kael had power. Had gods in his skin and the Codex etched in his veins. He had unity, Banners, strength, a Bastion—
—and it meant nothing.
Kael stood, trembling. Not in rage. In shame.
"I should've been faster," he said, voice hollow. "Should've shielded him. Should've—"
"Kael."
Whisper-Vow again. No judgment in her tone. Just truth.
"You can't fix everything."
His fists curled.
The glyph dimmed to near extinction.
Then… a sound. Barely perceptible.
A whimper.
Dren's lips parted. Air rasped in, wet and shallow.
Kael dropped back to his knees. "Dren?"
But the glyph—it had already faded. It wasn't him.
The boy was glowing faintly.
From within.
VyrmClaw stepped forward, one taloned hand extended. "That glyph… it was never for you."
Kael turned, stunned.
Ironmark, silent until now, spoke low. "Continuance does not obey strength. It responds to will. And the will to heal is often born in the one most broken."
Kael stared as the light in Dren's chest shimmered—then rose along his limbs, tracing thin glyph-paths across his arms like veins of fire. His eyes opened fully.
"…Kael?"
Tears fell down Kael's face before he even noticed.
"You came back," he whispered.
Dren blinked slowly. "I… I saw her. My sister. She said it wasn't time."
Kael let out a sound between a sob and a laugh. He turned to the Banners.
No one spoke.
Dreadmaw dropped to one knee.
One by one, the others followed.
Not in deference.
In grief. In awe. In shared recognition of a miracle, not wrought by power—but by the quiet refusal to let go.
Etuun stepped forward.
"I was wrong about you," he said. "About all of this."
Kael rose to meet him, wiping his face. "You were right. This isn't war anymore. It's something… deeper. Something we still don't understand."
Etuun extended his hand.
Kael took it.
Behind them, Crate and Grix approached. In Crate's hands: a new standard. The 13th.
Kael turned.
"This one," he said, "will not march for conquest or vengeance."
He knelt before Dren.
"It will march for life."
And in that moment, surrounded by ruin, pain, and flickering hope, Kael named the final Banner.
"We are The Continuance."
CODIFIED: BANNER XIII
The Continuance
Domain: Healing, Restoration, Protection
Glyph of Continuance: A Codex-bound seal activated not through force, but through the patient will to restore. Can trigger cellular reweaving, emotional memory dampening, and post-trauma repair—but only in moments of extreme empathy.
Commander: [To Be Named]
Vice-Captain: Dren (Interim)
Special Note: Formed not from battlefield victories, but from failure, heartbreak, and the refusal to let death define the future.
Rain continued to fall.
But now, it felt like something else.
Not mourning.
Cleansing.
And somewhere beyond the Bastion walls, the Sin Crithyx stirred.
But this time, the world had a healer.
And healing, as the Banners would soon learn, was not gentle.
It was relentless.